


businessmen they drink my wine

by gericault



Series: this is not our fate [1]
Category: 1960s Music Scene RPF, Bob Dylan (Musician), The Band (Band 1968)
Genre: 1965, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, READ TESTIMONY, Trauma, Triggers, be forewarned there's no rape or non-con in this fic but it's about sexual trauma, robbie has been through so much horrible shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 21:36:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11067615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gericault/pseuds/gericault
Summary: When Robbie finally turns to look at him, Bob's taking his shades off. They're almost opaque black and he wears them indoors and outdoors and in bright sun and dim light and rain and the nighttime darkness. The shades are like a door he can lock. Or unlock, when he wants to. His eyes are blue like Levon's and very clear.





	businessmen they drink my wine

**Author's Note:**

> We headed for the Brill Building... 
> 
> The Hawk said we were going up to the Roulette Records offices to meet with Morris Levy. Levy's office looked like a scene out of a Damon Runyon story. Outside the door, tough guys in dark suits with broken noses looked us over. [...] Morris welcomed Ronnie with his gravelly gangster voice (what happens to mobsters in their childhood that makes their voices go all gruff and raspy?). "Come on in, come on in, you wild man. I get such a kick out of this guy," he announced...
> 
> Ron gestured to me and said, "Morris, this is the kid I was telling you about. Think he might have a lot of PO-tential."
> 
> Levy looked over at me, nodded his head, and growled, "Yeah, he's a nice lookin' kid. If you had to do time, it'd be good to bring him along. I bet you don't know whether to hire him or fuck him."
> 
> \--from _Testimony_ by Robbie Robertson

Robbie's never been to California or Japan, but maybe this is what it feels like when an earthquake hits: this sense of instability, the ground shifting under his feet. His mind keeps wandering back to an image of the earth's crust splitting and opening up, letting him fall into the thick rolling magma below, so hot his flesh would melt and his bones would turn liquid and only flame would be left. He has the urge to crawl for shelter under a table or a desk.

They went down to that golden palace at 1619 Broadway, just Robbie and Bob, to meet up with Albert, who was there... chiseling somebody, probably, and afterward they got a ride back to Bob's place at the Chelsea to go over a couple of new songs Bob's been thinking about bringing into the studio.

Bob is peculiar, there's no other way to-- no, there are plenty of other ways to describe it. Eccentric. Unpredictable. Unusual. Weird. Some days he hates everyone he knows. He doesn't want to rehearse with the band till a song is right-- he barely wants to rehearse till the song's _over._ When he was booed at Forest Hills he seemed to like it. He says his hair is a tribute to Little Richard.

Journalists (to whom he lies extravagantly) are always saying that he looks like a girl, and in fact Robbie's met a lot of girls who were bigger and looked tougher than Bob does, but Bob isn't scared of anybody.

It's been a little over two weeks that they've known each other and Levon can't seem to get used to Bob's multitudinous weirdnesses, but surprisingly enough Robbie has. He feels nervous this evening, though, jittery, keyed up but not in a way he can work out on the guitar like he usually would. Even though it's hard to stay sitting down, he does, because whenever he gets up the shaking comes back; there's no reliable place to stand.

He can feel Bob watching him and worry about what he might be thinking creeps into the pit of Robbie's stomach, knotting up with the rest of... whatever it is.

Bob's singing something about crawling out a window, and saying he thinks it ought to be uptempo like "Rolling Stone," but his singing and playing keep getting softer, turning it into a ballad, and it's lovely but Robbie can't seem to focus on it. Finally Bob goes quiet and just looks at him from behind his shades, curiously and inscrutably, like a bird.

"It's funny," Robbie says, looking up at the ceiling, "you know, the last time I was in the Brill Building, I was fifteen years old..."

\--

It's almost as if he doesn't remember which story he's telling until it's nearly over, and when he does remember he suddenly regrets starting it, but it's a _story,_ he can't just stop in the middle. The Hawk used to be able to sell that quote from Levy as a punchline and get a big laugh, and then throw an arm around his shoulders as if to say what a good sport he was, and Robbie would be a good sport. And then if he could he'd go and find Levon and they'd sneak off and smoke grass if they had any, or he'd help Ricky put Richard to bed, or he'd let Garth try to explain Sacred Harp singing to him, but sometimes Ron would want him to stay and mingle so he'd mingle. After a few years he stopped even hearing the story when Ronnie told it; he'd learned its rhythm so well that he knew just when to join in with the laugh, as if it were all new to him, like he hadn't even been there when it happened.

The Hawk's not here now and Bob is a different audience, and Robbie's afraid to look at him. The earth shudders again.

"What did Hawkins do?" Bob asks, very softly.

"Uh," Robbie says. "Laughed real loud and slapped me on the back. And said _'hell_ of a compliment, son.'" He tries to smile; it doesn't quite work.

There's a silence, and then Bob says, still softly but with vehemence, "That's fucked up."

Robbie stops breathing for a second, but he couldn't say why. "You were fifteen?" Bob says, and Robbie nods, still looking at the ceiling, taking air into his lungs again but only just enough to stay alive. "Man, that is _fucked up,"_ Bob says again. "Nobody oughtta be allowed to say shit like that. To anybody. But especially not to a teenage kid. He should be in jail, just for that. And Hawkins should've done-- _something._ People can't-- I mean-- Robbie, you know that's fucked up, right?"

When Robbie finally turns to look at him, Bob's taking his shades off. They're almost opaque black and he wears them indoors and outdoors and in bright sun and dim light and rain and the nighttime darkness. The shades are like a door he can lock. Or unlock, when he wants to. His eyes are blue like Levon's and very clear.

Robbie's instinct is to argue: it wasn't that big a deal, just a joke, probably, after all he'd never met Levy before, wasn't used to his sense of humor; a joke, a few words, no harm. Words. A story. Scooter's house, next block over, "Let's play a game," a few words, no real harm done. Just a story Robbie could tell, never has, but could. Barely worth remembering.

(The memories he's dismantled-- ten years ago at the lakeshore, the midway sideshow, mosquitoes, the smell of fried food, booze, clown white, sweat and piss, fear, the story he can't even tell to himself.)

(He thinks again of that crack in the earth, the fire.)

Repetitive stories, and boring, in the end. The same gestures, the same look in the eyes, over and over. Don't these things happen to everyone? And if they don't, if he's _different_ in this as in everything else, what is the choice he keeps making and why can't he learn--

"People can't treat you like that," Bob says.

He has so many voices and Robbie hasn't heard this one before. Once the words are out his lips close, and his strong angled jaw sets tight, like he's angry, but his eyes are... They're very focused, like little flames, little cool blue flames. Robbie wants to gaze at Bob until he can think of the name for the expression on his face.

"Nobody's got the right," Bob says. Still that vehement but strangely soft voice. "Robbie." His chest loosens, just barely, enough for a full breath of air, and then Robbie nods.

Bob exhales, looking off into the distance for a moment, and starts strumming something in a minor key, and humming lightly along with it. Robbie can't instantly place the tune-- it sounds like one of Bob's but he's heard about fifty of Bob's songs in the last few weeks and can't put names to all of them yet. "That's an old one," Bob says, voice sounding curiously dry and parched now. "Still think the last verse is pretty good, though."

 _Well, I hope that they die, and their deaths will come soon_  
_I'll follow their caskets in the pale afternoon_  
_And I'll watch while they're lowered down to their deathbed_  
_And I'll stand over their graves till I'm sure that they're dead_

\--

Robbie goes somewhere for a little while. Not down into the earth's mantle, this time. When he comes back he blinks, and says, "Yeah. It's good."

"Hey," Bob says. "You wearing out?"

"No. No, I'm fine, I'll just... take a pill--"

"I got a bed," Bob says. "It's all right, if you want it."

"You don't have a couch," Robbie says. "Where are you gonna..."

"Me?" Bob says, looking genuinely confused. And then, "Oh. You think I'm gonna sleep. That's cute." Robbie attempts to be offended, but he's too tired.

"Look," he says, "if you... if you want the bed, you can kick me out, any time, I mean, it's yours..."

"If you're still there in two days then maybe," Bob says. "A week and I might get mad."

The bed is in the other room, through an archway, no doors between, and Robbie's worried for a moment that he'll start to feel the ground shaking again and won't be able to make it, but when he gets to his feet he finds that he's basically stable there, if exhausted. Bob pushes his rolling office chair over to the desk with his feet and cranks a piece of paper into the typewriter, and by the time Robbie sits down on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes Bob's already typing, tick-tick-tick.

Tick-tick-tick, _shhhhing,_ the sound of the carriage sliding back to start the next line. Not loud, from the next room, but audible, still there when Robbie closes his eyes. It reminds him of rain tapping on the roof of Levon's folks' house in Marvell, cooling a hot night down just enough to sleep in, not enough to freeze. Soft cool nights full of stars, and in the morning Levon's old man teasing them both for sleeping so late. He doesn't know what time it is here, he can't hear a clock, but he can hear Bob, tick-tick-tick _shhhhing_.

\--

\--

He wakes to the ticking keys, under a quilt he must have pulled over himself in his sleep. Robbie closes his eyes again.

\--

\--

Tick-tick-tick. Robbie closes his eyes.

\--

\--

A different set of keys wake him. Bob's piano, the notes and chords hitching slightly as they go by, the way they do when someone tries to play so quietly that not all the hammers even hit the strings. He can hear Bob's reedy voice, humming something.

\--

\--

Bob's sitting under the archway in the desk chair, a little buzzy like he always seems to be, legs crossed and one foot jumping in a fast rhythm. "Oh," Robbie says foggily, "you want your bed back?"

"Nah," Bob says. "Got something new, though, if you wanna hear it." Robbie smiles himself awake.

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS ALWAYS TO EPIGONE, DEFINESTRANGE AND SWEETMEL MY SISTERS IN FEELS


End file.
